What does your home-health job actually pay?
A per-visit rate is a sticker price. Your real hourly rate divides what the job pays by every hour the job actually takes: driving between homes, charting in the driveway, the dead time between visits. Plug in your numbers and see the gap.
From the editorial team at ZigBuddy. Uses the 2025 IRS standard mileage rate. Last reviewed: May 2026.
How to read this
The headline number is your real hourly rate: total weekly gross (visits + mileage reimbursement) divided by total hours the job actually takes. On per-visit pay, this is almost always meaningfully lower than the sticker rate suggests — because driving and charting are unpaid (or under-paid) time that still counts.
Two clinicians with identical per-visit rates and identical visit counts can take home very different amounts. The difference is geography (route density), documentation discipline (charting at the point of care vs. at midnight), and no-show rates. How home health pay actually works covers the full picture, and a real day in home health walks through these numbers in motion.
Calculator is for planning, not a tax document. It assumes 50 working weeks per year (2 weeks off). It doesn't account for self-employment tax, benefits, or agency-specific deductions. If you're choosing between job offers, use it for comparison, then talk to a tax professional about the rest.
Keep reading
To see what these numbers look like across a real Tuesday, walk through A real day in home health. For the full picture of how home-health pay works — per-visit vs. salary, productivity points, taxes, the lot — read how home-health pay actually works.
Want the same calculation from real entries, not estimates? Print the pay worksheet and log a week. Driving a lot? The mileage worksheet tracks miles per agency for reimbursement and tax.